15th borough - The aerial Métro of Paris

The line 6 of the Parisian subway circulates on a magnificent viaduct and is a miracle for all the lovers of Paris. This breathtaking picture taken since the montparnasse tower, allows to discover a part of the plan of the aerial line on the Garibaldi boulevard and the station Sèvres-Lecourbe.

© gérard Laurent

14th borough - The public urinal of the boulevard Arago

The boulevard Arago is famous for two reasons. First, we find the famous prison of La Santé there. But question the taxi drivers, it is doubtless for other one of its characteristics that they will quote you all the arago boulevard. Indeed, in the middle of the sinister pavement which lines the prison, rises the last urinal (Pissotière or Vespasienne) of Paris. A chance of a lifetime in our cities where, before the free automatic "sanisettes", It was necessary to enter a cafe and to pay to have the right to satisfy this very natural need.

© gérard Lavalette

13th borough - The institutional squat of Frigos

There is squat and squat, especially when the occupants pay a rent!.... That one is a true miracle, both by its architecture and by the artists who live here. Situated very close by the BNF, rue des Frigos, or 91 quai Panhard & Levassor, it will be protected, in spite of or thanks to the development of all the district. Other curiosity, moving, the building shelters one of the locomotives of "death trains" during the second war. An artist of the Frigos, Jean-Michel Frouin, managed to make restore it by the Polish railroad employees and to make return in France. The site of the Frigos : http://www.les-frigos.com

© gérard Laurent

12th borough - The column of July, Bastille Square

Built in 1840 on the ruins of an elephant of plaster while Napoleon had dreamed about a bronze elephant, the column is 23 metres high and, very useful piece of information for the broadcast and other "trivial pursuit", the genius is held on the left leg. Thirty years ago, we could freely climb on the summit, on flat shape. Proponents of suicide revolutionary eventually compelled the authorities to close down this free access. Fortunately, Willy Ronis had already taken his famous photo The Lovers of the Bastille.

© gérard Laurent

11th borough - Rear Window

The eleventh borough is one of these districts blessed by the lovers of old Paris. We still pick up there yardswhere the charm is left intact and windows of which let guess mysterious sweetly workshops, smelling the wax, the ink and the varnish...


© gérard Laurent

10th borough - Yard in the Faubourg saint Denis.

What a full of life neighbourough that this place of the tenth district! Popular, colorful, the children play their eternal games in yards with their old pavements. Here, doors have not yet severe digicodes and courts are of use as passage between two streets to the pressing inhabitants. During the walk, we can discover small miracles as this bronze statue.

© gérard Lavalette

9th borough - A la Mère de Famille

Based in 1761, the famous candy and chocolate store, "A la mère de Famille", my god which program, has recently just added to its practice, the manufacturing and the sale of ice creams. Perfect shop window for flavours of paradise, it is in 35 street of the rue du Faubourg Montmartre, way Parisian to walk nose and papillae in the wind.

© gérard Lavalette

8th borough - The Bridge Alexandre III

It is the czar Nicolas II personally, the last czar of Russia, who put in 1896, with the president Félix Faure, the first stone of this bridge, set up in honour of his father, the czar alexandre III. In the series " we raise many monuments to execrable monarches ", it was indeed the case of this bridge because the famous alexandre, in spite of the efforts of Henri Troyat who tried to discharge him in a talented biography, was an authoritarian and merciless czar, working all his life to restore an absolute dictatorship absolved on Russia, as if the leaders of Russia had only this idea there in head... We know the story!


© gérard Lavalette

7th borough - The Invalides

It is Louis XIV who made build the Church of the Invalides and its famous dome under which rests ashes of Napoleon, emperor adulated for some or conquering bloodthirsty for the others. The army made of the whole hotel its museum. Magnificent artillery for the amateurs.

© gérard Laurent

6th borough - The Quay of Conti

The Quay of Conti offers one of the most beautiful perspectives of Paris, with a magic sight on the right bank, the Pont Neuf and the public garden of the Vert Galant to the point of the Ile de la Cité.

© gérard Lavalette

Paris - 5th borough - Le Panthéon

The origin of the place would go back up to Clovis. Without going also far, all the Parisian have some memories buried around and not only ashes of the big men who are buried there (Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Gambetta, Emile Zola, Pierre and Marie Curie, etc.). In 1981, we saw also François Mitterrand, squeezed into his black coat there, to raise his rose of the same red as its scarf. A story says also that threatened by the humidity of the ground, the pantheon was saved by the ingenuity of an architect who had the idea to lift the building by intecting inject below some molten lead. The method? Practise at regular intervals holes of the diameter of a jumper everything around the base of the building, fill these holes of sawdust and spray abundantly the whole with water. The wet wood would have then, by simple elementary physical reaction, lifted the whole of some millimeters, enough to pour some lead in fusion there. The engineer let dry the sawdust and le Pantheon resumed its position. Really? Forgery? At any rate, as often, if the story is not true, it is attractive. We shall content ourselves with it.

© gérard Laurent